Company threatens to sue over ‘stolen’ towing project idea

Some companies that were earlier awarded a contract to tow broken-down vehicles on the country’s roads have threatened court action against the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC).

According to the Head of communications for Ruttchn Company limited, Evans Dzide, the NRSC acted in bad faith by awarding the contract to the Road Safety Management Company Limited in 2015 because when they were the originators of the idea.

However, the Road Safety Management Services (RSMSL) will be spearheading this nationwide towing programme, in which drivers will be required to pay a road safety fee ranging between GHc 10 and GHc 100.

He explained to Citi News that the genesis of this whole towing project is as a result of Ruttchn’s proposal to the National Road Safety Commission.

“Road Safety then took over the proposal to the seat of government then and when they got there, quickly, a five-member committee was set up to look into the proposal.”

Earlier on, there had been proposals that fell short but after two weeks, “a report was presented saying our proposal was the one that was ideal for the problems we are encountering on our roads,” Mr. Dzide said.

The programme was piloted between 2008 and 2010 and Mr. Dzide said his side “was just waiting for the law to be passed to support the project so that we [Ruttchn] could go all out.”

But he said, “somewhere in 2015, they wrote that we should converge and have a stakeholder meeting and it was there that we told that the contract has already been given to the Jospong group. At that time, our partners were here so they said if that is the case, we will go to court.”

“We petitioned the President and somewhere along the line, the Minister of Transport called us and we said that it is our project and we have the patent right to the project so we will not budge for them to do what they are doing.”